San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers agreed to a contract extension, news first broken by San Diego Union-Tribune's Kevin Acee and confirmed in an announcement from the team on Saturday night.
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The deal is for four years, valued at between $84 million and $85 million, NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reported.
For #Chargers and QB Philip Rivers, it’s a 4-year extension worth between $84-85M in new money. $65M guaranteed, source said.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) August 16, 2015
This is great news — and unexpected, given it's a Saturday night during the preseason — for a team with so many unknowns heading into this season, most notably if it'll stay in San Diego. Rivers had told the Union-Tribune that he would let the final year on his contract expire before negotiating a new one, hinting that a potential move to Los Angeles didn't sit well with him.*
"I know that moves are part of life," Rivers told the newspaper in March. "But that certainly is fair to say that [not being sold on moving to Los Angeles] is part of it. The good thing is I’m not under contract in a year where we’d potentially be in Los Angeles.”
Things evidently changed.

And they changed in a big way with a massive deal that appears to pay him like a top-five quarterback in terms of annual salary, and the $65 million guaranteed would be the most ever given to an NFL player — topping the $61.5 million Russell Wilson recently received.
*
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm